Anaheim Builds Up Hard Sell to Sports Fans : Arena: Marketing campaign starts for seats at complex due to open in fall of ’93. But there still are no pro teams signed.

Droplets of sweat falling from his nose, Bob Towery stood on a flatbed truck 60 feet below the ground tossing iron reinforcement bars around like sheets of chicken wire.

All around the 34-year-old Whittier ironworker, concrete piers seemed to be growing from the hot dirt floor like thick palm trunks.

“It’s going to be a pleasure to drive by this thing when we’re done,” Towery said Wednesday from his perch in the future basement of the Anaheim Arena. “This is a little different from the others. It’s my first arena, and I hope they build a lot of them. Business has been kind of slow.”

While Towery toiled beneath a broiling late-morning sun, county and city officials gathered only a few hundred yards away to toast each other with champagne and celebrate the beginning of a high-intensity marketing effort aimed at filling the building’s 19,200 seats, even if professional basketball and hockey franchises do not come to Anaheim.

“The Dream Becomes Reality,” heralded a banner hung above a makeshift podium where for brief moments Councilman Tom Daly and County Supervisor Don R. Roth stood hawking season tickets and luxury boxes, with prices yet unset, for unspecified sporting and entertainment events.

“People are going to be so proud of this building,” Daly said from the platform inside the project’s newly opened marketing office. “You won’t believe how good it’s going to be.”

Said Roth: “I love the name Anaheim Arena. It’s another milestone in the history of Anaheim. This is the missing link.”

Roth, a former Anaheim mayor, recalled the day in 1964 when, in a cornfield across the street, city officials grasped shovels with handles shaped like baseball bats to turn the first piles of soil for Anaheim Stadium and the California Angels. He said he was there when work began to enlarge “the Big A” in preparation for the Los Angeles Rams’ move to the city.

“People have been saying, ‘Hey, Don Roth, when are we going to get a basketball team in this area? With the building of this arena, you couldn’t have picked a better site,’ ” the supervisor said. “With the 40 million tourists who visit Orange County every year and the 2.5 million people who live here, this should be an instant success. It should be the envy of any basketball team and hockey team.”

Even its critics can’t deny that the $100-million project promises to be a handsome lure. With its plans for marble floors, detailed stone work, brass rails and oak cabinets, said Brad E. Mayne, project coordinator with Ogden Entertainment Services, a partner in the arena development, the facility could become a model for other developers.

“We’re going to have a beautiful facility,” said Councilman Irv Pickler, perhaps the city’s leading opponent of the arena project. “It’s being built and it’s something I have to live with now. I’ll even sell seats for it if I can, but I still think the timing is all wrong. Without any teams, I don’t want us to have an empty building just sitting over there.”

City Manager James Ruth said Ogden has been conducting secret talks with sports franchises for some time about the possibility of moving to Anaheim. On Wednesday, he characterized those discussions as “very positive,” saying that Ogden is confident that it will be able to land at least one professional sports franchise by opening day, planned for fall, 1993.

The city is not only racing against a construction schedule to land a team, but also against neighboring Santa Ana, where other arena developers say they are attempting to secure a team before beginning construction there.

In the meantime, Anaheim Arena spokesman John J. Nicoletti said a list bearing 250 names has been compiled of those interested in future season ticket sales, the purchase of the facility’s planned 82 suites or advertising sponsorships.

“We could have 125 events here a year without professional basketball or hockey,” Nicoletti said, adding that the dates could be filled with college sports, concerts and other entertainment events. “We’re going to see what the market can bear.”

Anaheim’s Municipal Arena

Address: 1566 Douglass Road (north of Katella Avenue, east of Orange Freeway)

Seating capacity: 19,200 for concerts; 18,200 for basketball games; 17,350 for hockey games

Construction started: June 3, 1991

Completion: Fall, 1993

Luxury suites: 82 (price uncertain)

Parking: 3,900 spaces

Arena jobs: 25 full-time staff positions and 1,000 part-time workers when complete

Project partnership: City of Anaheim, Ogden Corp. and the Nederlander Organization

Other Ogden arena and stadium interests in California: Anaheim Stadium, Bren Events Center (Irvine), Great Western Forum (Inglewood), Hughes Stadium (Sacramento), Spartan Stadium (San Jose).

Contractor: HuntCor Inc., Phoenix.

Architects: Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, Kansas City, Mo.